Thursday, April 12, 2007

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the woundIn the throat, burning and turning. All night afloatOn the silent sea we have heard the soundThat came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.

Under the mile off moon we trembled listeningTo the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud woundAnd when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singingThe voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boatFor my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.

But I would rather be horizontal.I am not a tree with my root in the soilSucking up minerals and motherly loveSo that each March I may gleam into leaf,Nor am I the beauty of a garden bedAttracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,Unknowing I must soon unpetal.Compared with me, a tree is immortalAnd a flower-head not tall, but more startling,And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.Sometimes I think that when I am sleepingI must most perfectly resemble them--Thoughts gone dim.It is more natural to me, lying down.Then the sky and I are in open conversation,And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me@ Sylvia Plath

Friday, March 23, 2007

I've come by, she says, to tell youthat this is it. I'm not kidding, it'sover. this is it.I sit on the couch watching her arrangeher long red hair before my bedroommirror.she pulls her hair up andpiles it on top of her head-she lets her eyes look atmy eyes-then she drops her hair andlets it fall down in front of her face.we go to bed and I hold herspeechlessly from the backmy arm around her neckI touch her wrists and handsfeel up toher elbowsno further.she gets up.this is it, she says,this will do. well,I'm going.I get up and walk herto the doorjust as she leavesshe says,I want you to buy mesome high-heeled shoeswith tall thin spikes,black high-heeled shoes.no, I want themred.I watch her walk down the cement walkunder the treesshe walks all right andas the pointsettas drip in the sunI close the door.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

not much chance,completely cut loose frompurpose,he was a young manriding a busthrough North Carolinaon the wat to somewhereand it began to snowand the bus stopped at a little cafein the hillsand the passengers entered.he sat at the counterwith the others,he ordered and the food arived.the meal wasparticularlygood and thecoffee.the waitress was unlike the womenhe hadknown.she was unaffected,there was a naturalhumor which camefrom her.the fry cook saidcrazy things.the dishwasher.in back,laughed, a goodcleanpleasantlaugh.the young man watchedthe snow through thewindows.he wanted to stayin that cafeforever.the curious feelingswam through himthat everything wasbeautifulthere,that it would alwaysstay beautifulthere.then the bus drivertold the passengersthat it was timeto board.the young manthought, I'll just sithere, I'll just stayhere.but thenhe rose and followedthe others into thebus.he found his seatand looked at the cafethrough the buswindow.then the bus movedoff, down a curve,downward, out ofthe hills.the young man looked straight foreward.he heard the otherpassengersspeaking of other things,or they werereadingorattempting tosleep.they had not noticed themagic.the young manput his head toone side,closed hiseyes,pretended tosleep.there was nothingelse to do-just to listen to thesound of theengine,the sound of the tires in thesnow.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

As you set out for Ithakahope your road is a long one,full of adventure, full of discovery.Laistrygonians, Cyclops,angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:you'll never find things like that on your wayas long as you keep your thoughts raised high,as long as a rare excitementstirs your spirit and your body.Laistrygonians, Cyclops,wild Poseidon-you won't encounter themunless you bring them along inside your soul,unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.May there be many summer mornings when,with what pleasure, what joy,you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;may you stop at Phoenician trading stationsto buy fine things,mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,sensual perfume of every kind-as many sensual perfumes as you can;and may you visit many Egyptian citiesto learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.Arriving there is what you're destined for.But don't hurry the journey at all.Better if it lasts for years,so you're old by the time you reach the island,wealthy with all you've gained on the way,not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.Without her you wouldn't have set out.She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

You always read about it:the plumber with the twelve childrenwho wins the Irish Sweepstakes.From toilets to riches.That story.

Or the nursemaid,some luscious sweet from Denmarkwho captures the oldest son's heart.from diapers to Dior.That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,the white truck like an ambulancewho goes into real estateand makes a pile.From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

Or the charwomanwho is on the bus when it cracks upand collects enough from the insurance.From mops to Bonwit Teller.That story.

Oncethe wife of a rich man was on her deathbedand she said to her daughter Cinderella:Be devout. Be good. Then I will smiledown from heaven in the seam of a cloud.The man took another wife who hadtwo daughters, pretty enoughbut with hearts like blackjacks.Cinderella was their maid.She slept on the sooty hearth each nightand walked around looking like Al Jolson.Her father brought presents home from town,jewels and gowns for the other womenbut the twig of a tree for Cinderella.She planted that twig on her mother's graveand it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.Whenever she wished for anything the dovewould dropp it like an egg upon the ground.The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

Next came the ball, as you all know.It was a marriage market.The prince was looking for a wife.All but Cinderella were preparingand gussying up for the event.Cinderella begged to go too.Her stepmother threw a dish of lentilsinto the cinders and said: Pick themup in an hour and you shall go.The white dove brought all his friends;all the warm wings of the fatherland came,and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,you have no clothes and cannot dance.That's the way with stepmothers.

Cinderella went to the tree at the graveand cried forth like a gospel singer:Mama! Mama! My turtledove,send me to the prince's ball!The bird dropped down a golden dressand delicate little slippers.Rather a large package for a simple bird.So she went. Which is no surprise.Her stepmother and sisters didn'trecognize her without her cinder faceand the prince took her hand on the spotand danced with no other the whole day.

As nightfall came she thought she'd betterget home. The prince walked her homeand she disappeared into the pigeon houseand although the prince took an axe and brokeit open she was gone. Back to her cinders.These events repeated themselves for three days.However on the third day the princecovered the palace steps with cobbler's waxand Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.Now he would find whom the shoe fitand find his strange dancing girl for keeps.He went to their house and the two sisterswere delighted because they had lovely feet.The eldest went into a room to try the slipper onbut her big toe got in the way so she simplysliced it off and put on the slipper.The prince rode away with her until the white dovetold him to look at the blood pouring forth.That is the way with amputations.They just don't heal up like a wish.The other sister cut off her heelbut the blood told as blood will.The prince was getting tired.He began to feel like a shoe salesman.But he gave it one last try.This time Cinderella fit into the shoelike a love letter into its envelope.

At the wedding ceremonythe two sisters came to curry favorand the white dove pecked their eyes out.Two hollow spots were leftlike soup spoons.

Cinderella and the princelived, they say, happily ever after,like two dolls in a museum casenever bothered by diapers or dust,never arguing over the timing of an egg,never telling the same story twice,never getting a middle-aged spread,their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.Regular Bobbsey Twins.That story.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Just before our love got lost you said"I am as constant as a northern star"And I said, "Constant in the darknessWhere's that at?If you want me I'll be in the bar"

On the back of a cartoon coasterIn the blue TV screen lightI drew a map of CanadaOh CanadaAnd I sketched your face on it twice

Oh you are in my blood like holy wineOh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweetOh I could drink a case of youI could drink a case of you darlingStill I'd be on my feetI'd still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painterI live in a box of paintsI'm frightened by the devilAnd I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraidI remember that time that you told me, you said"Love is touching souls"Surely you touched mine"Cause part of you pours out of meIn these lines from time to time

Oh you are in my blood like holy wineAnd you taste so bitter but you taste so sweetOh I could drink a case of youI could drink a case of you darlingStill I'd be on my feetI'd still be on my feet

I met a womanShe had a mouth like yoursShe knew your lifeShe knew your devils and your deedsAnd she said"Go to him, stay with him if you canOh but be prepared to bleed"

Oh but you are in my blood you're my holy wineOh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweetI could drink a case of you darlingStill I'd be on my feetStill I'd be on my feetI'd still be on my feet

Thursday, February 15, 2007

The first warm day,and by mid-afternoonthe snow is no morethan a washingstrewn over the yards,the bedding rolled in knotsand leaking water,the white shirts lyingunder the evergreens.Through the heaviest driftsrise autumn’s fallenbicycles, small carnivalsof paint and chrome,the Octopusand Tilt-A-Whirlbeginning to turnin the sun. Now children,stiffened by winterand dressed, somehow,like old men, mutterand bend to the workof building dams.But such a spring is brief;by five o’clockthe chill of sundown,darkness, the blue TVsflashing like stormsin the picture windows,the yards gone gray,the wet dogs barkingat nothing. Far offacross the cornfieldsstaked for streets and sewers,the body of a farmermissing since fallwill show upin his garden tomorrow,as unexpectedas a tulip.

Long ago we quit lifting our heelslike the others—horse, dog, and tiger—though we thrill to their speedas they flee. Even the mousebearing the great weight of a nuggetof dog food is enviably graceful.There is little spring to our walk,we are so burdened with responsibility,all of the disciplinary actionsthat have fallen to us, the punishments,the killings, and all with our feetbound stiff in the skins of the conquered.But sometimes, in the early hours,we can feel what it must have been liketo be one of them, up on our toes,stealing past doors where others are sleeping,and suddenly able to see in the dark.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Loving me with my shows offmeans loving my long brown legs,sweet dears, as good as spoons;and my feet, those two childrenlet out to play naked. Intricate nubs,my toes. No longer bound.And what's more, see toenails andall ten stages, root by root.All spirited and wild, this littlepiggy went to market and this little piggystayed. Long brown legs and long brown toes.Further up, my darling, the womanis calling her secrets, little houses,little tongues that tell you.

There is no one else but usin this house on the land spit.The sea wears a bell in its navel.And I'm your barefoot wench for awhole week. Do you care for salami?No. You'd rather not have a scotch?No. You don't really drink. You dodrink me. The gulls kill fish,crying out like three-year-olds.The surf's a narcotic, calling out,I am, I am, I amall night long. Barefoot,I drum up and down your back.In the morning I run from door to doorof the cabin playing chase me.Now you grab me by the ankles.Now you work your way up the legsand come to pierce me at my hunger mark

It's in the heart of the grapewhere that smile lies.It's in the good-bye-bow in the hairwhere that smile lies.It's in the clerical collar of the dresswhere that smile lies.What smile?The smile of my seventh year,caught here in the painted photograph.

It's peeling now, age has got it,a kind of cancer of the backgroundand also in the assorted features.It's like a rotten flagor a vegetable from the refrigerator,pocked with mold.I am aging without sound,into darkness, darkness.

Anne,who are you?

I open the veinand my blood rings like roller skates.I open the mouthand my teeth are an angry army.I open the eyesand they go sick like dogswith what they have seen.I open the hairand it falls apart like dust balls.I open the dressand I see a child bent on a toilet seat.I crouch there, sitting dumblypushing the enemas out like ice cream,letting the whole brown worldturn into sweets.

Only one cell in the frozen hive of nightis lit, or so it seems to us:this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.Beyond the glass, the wintry citycreaks like an ancient wooden bridge.A great wind rushes under all of us.The bigger the window, the more it trembles.

What scene would I want to be enveloped inmore than this one,an ordinary night at the kitchen table,floral wallpaper pressing in,white cabinets full of glass,the telephone silent,a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to thinkabout all that is going on outside--leaves gathering in corners,lichen greening the high grey rocks,while over the dunes the world sails on,huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this tablethere is nothing that I need,not even a job that would allow me to row to work,or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,the clear ovals of a glass of water,a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,not to mention the odd snarling fishin a frame on the wall,and the way these three candles--each a different height--are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive meif I lower my head now and listento the short bass candle as he takes a solowhile my heartthrums under my shirt--frog at the edge of a pond--and my thoughts fly off to a provincemade of one enormous skyand about a million empty branches.

When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow,the distinguishable flakesblowing sideways,looked like krillfleeing the maw of an advancing whale.

At least they looked that way to mefrom the taxi window,and since I happened to be sittingthat fading Sunday afternoonin the very center of the universe,who was in a better positionto say what looked like what,which thing resembled some other?

Yes, it was a run of white planktonborne down the Avenue of the Americasin the stream of the wind,phosphorescent against the weighty buildings.

Which made the taxi itself,yellow and slow-moving,a kind of undersea creature,I thought as I wiped the fog from the glass,

and me one of its protruding eyes,an eye on a stemswiveling this way and thatmonitoring one side of its world,observing tons of watertons of peoplecolored signs and lightsand now a wildly blowing race of snow.

In the beginning was the three-pointed star,One smile of light across the empty face,One bough of bone across the rooting air,The substance forked that marrowed the first sun,And, burning ciphers on the round of space,Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,Three-syllabled and starry as the smile,And after came the imprints on the water,Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;The blood that touched the crosstree and the grailTouched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fireThat set alight the weathers from a spark,A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower,Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rockThe secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the wordThat from the solid bases of the lightAbstracted all the letters of the void;And from the cloudy bases of the breathThe word flowed up, translating to the heartFirst characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.The brain was celled and soldered in the thoughtBefore the pitch was forking to a sun;Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,Blood shot and scattered to the winds of lightThe ribbed original of love.

They are the last romantics, these candles:Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers,And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints.It is touching, the way they'll ignore

A whole family of prominent objectsSimply to plumb the deeps of an eyeIn its hollow of shadows, its fringe of reeds,And the owner past thirty, no beauty at all.Daylight would be more judicious,

Giving everybody a fair hearing.They should have gone out with the balloon flights and the stereopticon.This is no time for the private point of view.When I light them, my nostrils prickle.Their pale, tentative yellows

Drag up false, Edwardian sentiments,And I remember my maternal grandmother from Vienna.As a schoolgirl she gave roses to Franz Josef.The burghers sweated and wept. The children wore white.And my grandfather moped in the Tyrol,

Imagining himself a headwaiter in America,Floating in a high-church hushAmong ice buckets, frosty napkins.These little globes of light are sweet as pears.Kindly with invalids and mawkish women,

They mollify the bald moon.Nun-souled, they burn heavenward and never marry.The eyes of the child I nurse are scarcely open.In twenty years I shall be retrogradeAs these drafty ephemerids.

I watch their spilt tears cloud and dull to pearls.How shall I tell anything at allTo this infant still in a birth-drowse?Tonight, like a shawl, the mild light enfolds her,The shadows stoop over the guests at a christening.

Born to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath published her first poem when she was eight. Sensitive, intelligent, compelled toward perfection in everything she attempted, she was, on the surface, a model daughter, popular in school, earning straight A's, winning the best prizes. By the time she entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1950 she already had an impressive list of publications, and while at Smith she wrote over four hundred poems.

Sylvia's surface perfection was however underlain by grave personal discontinuities, some of which doubtless had their origin in the death of her father (he was a college professor and an expert on bees) when she was eight. During the summer following her junior year at Smith, having returned from a stay in New York City where she had been a student ``guest editor'' at Mademoiselle Magazine, Sylvia nearly succeeded in killing herself by swallowing sleeping pills. She later described this experience in an autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, published in 1963. After a period of recovery involving electroshock and psychotherapy Sylvia resumed her pursuit of academic and literary success, graduating from Smith summa cum laude in 1955 and winning a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge, England.

In 1956 she married the English poet Ted Hughes , and in 1960, when she was 28, her first book, The Colossus, was published in England. The poems in this book---formally precise, well wrought---show clearly the dedication with which Sylvia had served her apprenticeship; yet they give only glimpses of what was to come in the poems she would begin writing early in 1961. She and Ted Hughes settled for a while in an English country village in Devon, but less than two years after the birth of their first child the marriage broke apart.

The winter of 1962-63, one of the coldest in centuries, found Sylvia living in a small London flat, now with two children, ill with flu and low on money. The hardness of her life seemed to increase her need to write, and she often worked between four and eight in the morning, before the children woke, sometimes finishing a poem a day. In these last poems it is as if some deeper, powerful self has grabbed control; death is given a cruel physical allure and psychic pain becomes almost tactile.

On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath killed herself with cooking gas at the age of 30. Two years later Ariel, a collection of some of her last poems, was published; this was followed by Crossing the Water and Winter Trees in 1971, and, in 1981, The Collected Poems appeared, edited by Ted Hughes.

i carry your heart with me i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)i am never without it(anywherei go you go,my dear; and whatever is doneby only me is your doing,my darling)i fearno fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i wantno world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)and it's you are whatever a moon has always meantand whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows(here is the root of the root and the bud of the budand the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which growshigher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

Always for the first timeHardly do I know you by sightYou return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my windowA wholly imaginary houseIt is there that from one second to the nextIn the inviolate darknessI anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurringThe one and only riftIn the facade and in my heartThe closer I come to youIn realityThe more the key sings at the door of the unknown roomWhere you appear alone before meAt first you coalesce entirely with the brightnessThe elusive angle of a curtainIt's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of GrasseWith the diagonal slant of its girls pickingBehind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bareBefore them a T-square of dazzling lightThe curtain invisibly raisedIn a frenzy all the flowers swarm back inIt is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleepYou as though you could beThe same except that I shall perhaps never meet youYou pretend not to know I am watching youMarvelously I am no longer sure you knowYou idleness brings tears to my eyesA swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gesturesIt's a honeydew huntThere are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in theforestThere are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-LoretteTwo lovely crossed legs caught in long stockingsFlaring out in the center of a great white cloverThere is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivyThere isBy my leaning over the precipiceOf your presence and your absence in hopeless fusionMy finding the secretOf loving youAlways for the first time

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

You thought that it could never happento all the people that you became,your body lost in legend, the beast so very tame.But here, right here,between the birthmark and the stain,between the ocean and your open vein,between the snowman and the rain,once again, once again,love calls you by your name.The women in your scrapbookwhom you still praise and blame,you say they chained you to your fingernailsand you climb the halls of fame.Oh but here, right here,between the peanuts and the cage,between the darkness and the stage,between the hour and the age,once again, once again,love calls you by your name.

Shouldering your lonelinesslike a gun that you will not learn to aim,you stumble into this movie house,then you climb, you climb into the frame.Yes, and here, right herebetween the moonlight and the lane,between the tunnel and the train,between the victim and his stain,once again, once again,love calls you by your name.

I leave the lady meditatingon the very love which I, I do not wish to claim,I journey down the hundred steps,but the street is still the very same.And here, right here,between the dancer and his cane,between the sailboat and the drain,between the newsreel and your tiny pain,once again, once again,love calls you by your name.

Where are you, Judy, where are you, Anne?Where are the paths your heroes came?Wondering out loud as the bandage pulls away,was I, was I only limping, was I really lame?Oh here, come over here,between the windmill and the grain,between the sundial and the chain,between the traitor and her pain,once again, once again,love calls you by your name.

The rain falls down on last year's man,that's a jew's harp on the table,that's a crayon in his hand.And the corners of the blueprint are ruined since they rolledfar past the stems of thumbtacksthat still throw shadows on the wood.And the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mendand all the rain falls down amenon the works of last year's man.I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the darkoh one by one she had to tell themthat her name was Joan of Arc.I was in that army, yes I stayed a little while;I want to thank you, Joan of Arc,for treating me so well.And though I wear a uniform I was not born to fight;all these wounded boys you lie beside,goodnight, my friends, goodnight.

I came upon a wedding that old families had contrived;Bethlehem the bridegroom,Babylon the bride.Great Babylon was naked, oh she stood there trembling for me,and Bethlehem inflamed us bothlike the shy one at some orgy.And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veilthat I had to draw aside to seethe serpent eat its tail.

Some women wait for Jesus, and some women wait for Cainso I hang upon my altarand I hoist my axe again.And I take the one who finds me back to where it all beganwhen Jesus was the honeymoonand Cain was just the man.And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skinthat the wilderness is gatheringall its children back again.

The rain falls down on last year's man,an hour has gone byand he has not moved his hand.But everything will happen if he only gives the word;the lovers will rise upand the mountains touch the ground.But the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mendand all the rain falls down amenon the works of last year's man.

It's true that all the men you knew were dealerswho said they were through with dealingEvery time you gave them shelterI know that kind of manIt's hard to hold the hand of anyonewho is reaching for the sky just to surrender,who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behindyou find he did not leave you very muchnot even laughterLike any dealer he was watching for the cardthat is so high and wildhe'll never need to deal anotherHe was just some Joseph looking for a mangerHe was just some Joseph looking for a manger

And then leaning on your window sillhe'll say one day you caused his willto weaken with your love and warmth and shelterAnd then taking from his walletan old schedule of trains, he'll sayI told you when I came I was a strangerI told you when I came I was a stranger.

But now another stranger seemsto want you to ignore his dreamsas though they were the burden of some otherO you've seen that man beforehis golden arm dispatching cardsbut now it's rusted from the elbows to the fingerAnd he wants to trade the game he plays for shelterYes he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.

Ah you hate to see another tired manlay down his handlike he was giving up the holy game of pokerAnd while he talks his dreams to sleepyou notice there's a highwaythat is curling up like smoke above his shoulder.It is curling just like smoke above his shoulder.

You tell him to come in sit downbut something makes you turn aroundThe door is open you can't close your shelterYou try the handle of the roadIt opens do not be afraidIt's you my love, you who are the strangerIt's you my love, you who are the stranger.

Well, I've been waiting, I was surewe'd meet between the trains we're waiting forI think it's time to board anotherPlease understand, I never had a secret chartto get me to the heart of thisor any other matterWhen he talks like thisyou don't know what he's afterWhen he speaks like this,you don't know what he's after.

Let's meet tomorrow if you chooseupon the shore, beneath the bridgethat they are building on some endless riverThen he leaves the platformfor the sleeping car that's warmYou realize, he's only advertising one more shelterAnd it comes to you, he never was a strangerAnd you say ok the bridge or someplace later.

Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.Here's yesterday, last year ---Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vastWindless threadwork of a tapestry.

Flick the glass with your fingernail:It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stirThough nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.The inhabitants are light as cork,Every one of them permanently busy.

At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.Never trespassing in bad temper:Stalling in midair,Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy

As Victorian cushions. This familyOf valentine faces might please a collector:They ring true, like good china.

Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.The light falls without letup, blindingly.

A woman is dragging her shadow in a circleAbout a bald hospital saucer.It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paperAnd appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.She lives quietly

With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a pictureShe has one too many dimensions to enter.Grief and anger, exorcised,Leave her alone now.

The future is a grey seagullTattling in its cat-voice of departure.Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,Crawls up out of the sea.

She was all in black but for a yellow pony tailthat trailed from her cap, and bright blue glovesthat she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread,as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozentop of the world. And there, with a clatter of blades,she began to braid a loose path that broadenedinto a meadow of curls. Across the ice she swoopedand then turned back and, halfway, bent her legsand leapt into the air the way a crane leaps, blue gloveslifting her lightly, and turned a snappy half-turnthere in the wind before coming down, arms wide,skating backward right out of that moment, smiling backat the woman she'd been just an instant before.

"There's never an end to dustand dusting," my aunt would sayas her rag, like a thunderhead,scudded across the yellow oakof her little house. There she livedseventy years with a ballof compulsion closed in her fist,and an elbow that creaked and poppedlike a branch in a storm. Now dustis her hands and dust her heart.There's never an end to it.